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Investment and Insurance needs. Serving the Kalamazoo area Top: Grand Rapids artist Chakila Hoskins adds detail to an oil painting she is working on. Bottom: Al Harris Jr. holds a picture of his daughter Kim as he prepares to work on a portrait of her for the exhibit.
error. Finally satisfied, she created a channel system to allow molten metal to reach all areas of the sculpture and made a ceramic shell out of slurry and sand for the casting, building up seven layers. Once the shell dried, Burress fired it to melt out the wax and plastic. “Then the real fun began,” she says. Within WMU’s foundry, she used the pouring floor — similar to a sand pit — to cast the sculpture, pouring in molten metal. She finished by cutting off the channel system, sanding and cleaning up the sculpture, and adding patina to create visual depth. If that sounds arduous to the layperson, like many of the artists in Where We Stand, Burress knew from a young age that she wanted to be an artist. She remembers, as a kid, seeing old drawings her father did and knowing she wanted to create. For others, it took a while. When Mills was a senior in high school, she wanted to be a surgeon. “Anyone who knows me personally just fell out of their seat laughing,” says the printmaker. Her uncle suggested art school, which she tried for a year before dropping out, joining the Navy, and working odd jobs. By her late 20s, though, she knew she wanted to pursue art for the rest of her life. “For me, at least, art is not a profession but an identity,” she says. “It is an exciting, exhausting journey of self-discovery.”
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